horrors.

Next to Jerrold and little Colin Anne loved Eliot. He seemed to know
when she was thinking about her mother and to understand. He took her
into the woods to look for squirrels; he showed her the wildflowers and
told her all their names: bugloss, and lady's smock and speedwell,
king-cup, willow herb and meadow sweet, crane's bill and celandine.

One day they found in the garden a tiny egg-shaped shell made of
gold-coloured lattice work. When they put it under the microscope they
saw inside it a thing like a green egg. Every day they watched it; it
put out two green horns, and a ridge grew down the middle of it, and one
morning they found the golden shell broken. A long, elegant fly with
slender wings crawled beside it.

When Benjy died of eating too much lettuce Eliot was sorry. Aunt Adeline
said it was all put on and that he really wanted to cut him up and see
what he was made of. But Eliot didn't. He said Benjy was sacred. That
was because he knew they loved him. And he dug the grave and lined it
with moss and told Aunt Adeline to shut up when she said it ought to
have been lettuce leaves.

Aunt Adeline complained that it was hard that Eliot couldn't be nice to
her when he was her favorite.

"Little Anne, little Anne, what have you done to my Eliot?" She was
always saying things like that. Anne couldn't think what she meant till
Jerrold told her she was the only kid that Eliot had ever looked at. The
big Hawtrey girl from Medlicote would have given her head to be in
Anne's shoes.